Loot drops in 10 man - Randomness?

[Deleted]

Some people may or may not agree with me on this.

Since the start of 4.2 I've only raided 10 man since I find it more relaxing and enjoyable than 25 man. However, the randomness when it comes to the loot drops really bothers me.

In 4.2 I raided as a protection paladin, and I spent 4 months waiting for the shield to drop of Bale'roc. (No, a shield did not drop in my absence)

Come 4.3 I started raiding on my mage again. Due to the inactivity in the main raid on my mage I do not have a Dragonwrath, and therefore I am dying for a proper weapon such as Lightning Rod HC to drop off Hagara. It's been 4 or 5 Hagara HC kills so far (Starting to lose count ._. sorry!) and still no staff. Hasn't dropped on normal the weeks before that either for that matter.

The first 3 weeks that we killed Ultraxion HC we got three conquerer chests from him. We brought in our disc priest instead of our resto shaman for the third kill just in case another chest dropped, since otherwise it would have gone to someone's offspec.

On 25 man, you get five pieces of loot from every boss if I remember correct. On 10 man, you get two.
My general concern is that anything that drops of a 25 man boss will most likely always end up being used, while on 10 man, the chance of no one needing the item that drops is fairly big.

Would it be inappropriate to introduce some kind of system for the loot in 10 man raids that solved this problem?

I've actually come up with a few ideas which in my head sounds pretty good.

Let's say that half of the loot table of a certain boss drops when you kill it on 10 man, and then the raid leader gets to pick two of these items while the rest disappears into nothingness. (Maybe make those two loot pieces unavailable for looting the week after that?) I do of course realize that this would create a few problems in PuGs and unorganized guilds. Maybe have an option to turn this kind of function on and off?

What do you think of my idea? All kinds of feedback is welcome. Would this work or would it just be better to implement some kind of diminishing returns effect?

If you guys have any ideas of your own, feel free to share them!

[Fiana]

10 weeks passed. You should get 5 items tops.
Did you get them? No? Well, don't worry, you have at least 6 month = 24 weeks of DS, so most of them will drop.

And no, YOU SHOULD NOT get ALL the loot. It is normal for 1-2 items not to drop at all.

[mmff4]

RNG is a part of the loot system wheter you like it or not and a system where you can choose whatever loots you want wouldn't work. Although I have to admit, the current loot system is somewhat broken.

It could be made better by merging all three tokens to one (ToC) and allow you to exchange some rarely used items to some other pieces of equipment. For example you could exchange plate healing boots to plate tanking boots or spirit mail to agility mail. Basically a SWP style system where you exchange piece of equipment + sunmote for different piece of equipment.

But removing RNG completely wouldn't work. If you could choose the two loots you want, it would take like 10 weeks to gear up your whole raid. Imagine if everyone in your raid would be in BiS gear by now.

[Evil Inside]

Heh Im still waiting for an Experimental Specimen Slicer to drop, still havent seen one drop since we started raiding DS about 6 or so weeks ago.

[Dorfie]

I think it was fine in Firelands but now that the there are 5 bosses that drop 1 item + 1 tier token it can get really frustrating. Not to mention the random trinkets, we've yet to see a Cunning, Vial OR Windward Heart after 11 full clears (66 bosses that could have dropped them :/)

[Yosef1015]

loot drops in 10 man is random thanks for stating the obvious

[Seolla]

The main problem with DS 10man is that they changed all the teir pieces to count as 1 piece of loot now (as oppose to an extra like it Fireland and earlier).

Add in the fact that there are more tier pieces drops (due to them not buyable from vendor), you literally have only 1 non-tier piece dropping from 5 of the bosses per week

Oh, and did I mention those shared trinkets can take up that one slot too?

[Eliot123]

I'd be happy if they just made token drops a bit less random.

[Harsesis]

My issue with 10 man loot right now is all the bosses that drop tokens. Right now these tokens are taking the spot where a piece used to be. Now it isn't bad in the short term because it means more tier. But in the long term after everyone gets the tokens they need there will be more wasted loot since you know it will be a token instead of a second item.

[Oldmilwaukee]

Over here we got Will of the Unbinding 5 week in a row. 3 of them were de'ed. Ty Lady RNG.

[Barael]

loot drops in 10 man is random thanks for stating the obvious

Thank you too, sir, for this marvelous contribution to the discussion.

But yeah I totally agree with the OP, rng loot is bullshit and it's much worse in 10-man than in 25-man (25-man tends to the intended distribution much faster thanks to larger sample size). I mean the 3rd and maybe 4th time heroic Belt of Flayed Skin dropped was kinda funny (we have exactly 1 user for it), but by the 6th time the joke had gotten kinda old. Also we'll soon be vendoring Protector tokens since those classes soon have their secondary and tertiary specs with full heroic t13 while our Vanquisher users are running around with LFR pieces.

We've been especially lucky with tank drops as well. Not a single shield or tank belt from Blackhorn on any difficulty. No tank bracers from Zon'ozz or boots from Ultraxion, on any difficulty. Zero tank rings after 11 weeks of clearing.

The amount of bosses and different items is clearly balanced around 25-mans where you get what 5 or 6 drops per boss. 10-mans just get fucked with bad loot streaks every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

[Ashbringerx]

I think the token system in ToC was the best one. I've been pretty lucky with tokens in DS so I'm knocking on wood but I remember Cho'Gall not dropping my shoulders for so long it was getting ridiculous.
I think the shared boss loot is a good idea, however if a shared boss loot drops, it should be added to the other 2 items. Each boss would have a certain % of dropping an item from the shared boss pool in addition to the 2 items. This would make it less frustrating I believe. Vial of Shadows and Bone-Link Fetish havent drop yet in all our runs and a lot of dps are waiting for these...

[Senka]

I've really despised this kind of loot design for this expansion. It's completely senseless, so I agree with you. All you can do is deal with it and know what your progression in raids will be held back by it.

[Deleted]

Slightly comforting, but also kinda sad that other guilds also suffer from streaks of the same useless gear piece.

Tier tokens taking up the loot slot of the second gear piece sure is frustrating since the rest of the 5-8 drops from that boss has an even lower chance of appearing.

Shared boss loot seems like a cool idea in general, but like some of you said, it should be added to the loot of that boss rather than replacing loot on the original loot table.

The reason why the average raider in a 25 man guild doesn't get full BiS gear in an instant is because there are 24 other raiders to gear at the same time. In a 10 man guild however, the reason for people not getting gear is apparently due to the lack of gear drops. Instead you get pointless items that no one needs, not even for off spec. This is why I feel that some sort of loot adjustor should be implemented for 10 man. Getting to pick the gear yourself might be a lot to ask but as long as you don't get the same item every week.

Who knows? This might be intended by Blizzard as some sort of sign that 25 man pays off a little more sometimes.

[Seriss]

25-man raider here. Ever since DS went live, we've seen 3 healer trinkets total (and one of them dropped when it was still crap due to no int... first ID, I think), the third having dropped this week on Tuesday before ID reset. We're drowning in agi-trinkets, everybody has them for their off-specs. We've been disenchanting ALL mail belts since forever because we're drowning in them too, and every shaman could have a dozen of them already if we had the space :P

Random loot is random.

The shamy who couldn't make it to mainraid during the first week of DS and went into 10-man came out with a full T13 set plus Maw of the Dragonlord. The rest of us is filling up their very recently acquired T13-gear with a few LFR pieces to get set bonuses. So, I might get the impression that you're getting geared faster in a 10-man. I know a 10-man group that's disenchanting the caster and healer trinkets from Spine already because nobody has ANY use for them anymore. Lucky people, I hate them :P

Oh and... Windward Heart doesn't exist. Not even in a 25-man raid.

[Kael]

I've got to agree with Seriss here.

I run 10 and 25 in two different groups, and neither's had particularly good luck with loot. One hunter, one feral (me), and we've DE'd 8 Kiril's in 4 weeks. My 10-man group has DE'd 3 in 4 weeks. Sucks to be us?

Similarly, Morchok 25H just loves dropping thrown weapons. He loves them every single week. Every one. 1-2 a week, no exceptions granted. Sometimes the luck of the draw is awful.

I will say, though, it FEELS worse on 10. We brought in a guest shaman on 10 and gave him 4piece at Ultraxion, from 0. Our local shaman now has 14 pieces of tier (5, 5, and 4) and our members are talking about logging on warriors or hunters just to shamelessly take the tokens >.>. The 25 is selling tokens at this point, too, but it doesn't feel quite as harsh.

[Fiana]

The 25 is selling tokens at this point, too, but it doesn't feel quite as harsh.

Its actually worse in 25man. In 25man you have 12.5 players per token, while 10man got 10 players per token.
And while you normally never run 10man with 2 mages or 2 rogues, there could be MUCH more rogues, mages, as well as ferals/boomkins/restor druids, tank and dps dks, etc.
We have 5 mages in our main roster, 4 rogues, 3 dks, 2 resto druids,2 ferals, 2 boomkins.

I did 6 full heroic clears and 4 6/8H clears by now, but I'm still running with two 384 set pieces.

Usually people who say that there is more loot in 25man don't understand how many people actually need loot in 25man.

Anyways, gearing in both 10 and 25man is EXTREMELY fast. In 10 weeks everyone who cleared DS once a week increased their itemlevel by at least 15 points. I can rarely see a raider with more that 1-2 Firelands pieces. Most raiders have none.

10man loot corrupted players minds. No matter how much loot they get, they always want moar, they are never happy.

In wotlk there was 3 items per 25 players - one per 8.5.
In classic there were 2 items per 40 players - ONE item per 20 players!!

There was a lot of loot drama, but loot was truly EPIC.

Now all those kids in 10mans get 1 item per 5 players from every boss, but they still come to forums and whine, whine, whine about loot. Its just beyond my understanding. They don't even need the loot to down bosses after all those nerfs.

I see the only way to deal with loot.
1) Give "loot token" in the end of the raid clear to let any whining kid buy any item he wants.
2) Create "Elite" raid difficulty without any gear drops. All players who zone into "Elite" difficulty should have normalized gear. "Bring player, not gear".

[Maelstrom51]

10 weeks in DS.
Not a single agility trinket has dropped.

Awesome.

---------- Post added 2012-02-10 at 11:34 AM ----------

We have 5 mages in our main roster, 4 rogues, 3 dks, 2 resto druids,2 ferals, 2 boomkins.

I found your problem. That's 18 people on one token. Leaving 7 people for the other tokens.
Your raid comp seems fucked, good sir.

[junialum]

Take the size of the boss' loot table. Pick out 2 for 10man. Pick out 5 for 25man. Loot table size are similar across both raid sizes.

^This is why. It's obvious you will get more variety on 25 man.


Loot on 10man has always been screwy. From poorer RNG due to the above and legendaries taking 2-3x longer to build. In ICC, my shield never once dropped for the ENTIRE duration.

25man guilds will call this as the '10 man tax' since 10mans have a lesser amount of administrative issues. Smaller group easier to handle.

[Pokty]

10 man mages and locks are really screwed this tier if they don't have orange since the only decent pre-DW heroic weapon is 410 lightning rod and good luck getting that when Hagara drops one item. moonkin and ele shamans are in a much better spot since they can use the mace off the first boss, and that's much more likely to drop since the boss drops 2 items. and if they get unlucky with the 410 mace they can use the (albeit missing socket) dagger from yorahj or even the 410 staff from warmaster.